Büro Ole Scheeren has won the international competition for the design of Tencent’s new global headquarters in Shenzhen, China. The new structure, occupying a 14-hectare site, will become part of a new urban development along Qianhai Bay. Envisioned as a centerpiece within the future technology and financial district, Büro Ole Scheeren’s Tencent Helix will become the center of the multinational company’s expanding ecosystem.
Captivated by cinematographic references and the narrative space, Ole Scheeren's work stands out by its disruptive solutions to the present social challenges and the cities we live in. With more than 30 years of career in the architecture field, Ole Scheeren has won several awards and one of its most iconic works includes the CCTV Headquarters in Beijing when was director and partner at OMA, before founding Büro Ole Scheeren.
In this interview, documented at the World Architecture Festival 2022, Scheeren discusses the importance of the narrative of a project and the quality architecture has by building the stages where people live: "the fictional anticipation of life".
Ana Pinto da Silva, Co-Founder & CEO at Minka Homes & Communities, will give the closing keynote address at the World Architecture Festival (WAF) in Lisbon on Friday 2 December 2022. She will follow a stellar line-up of the industry’s most influential figures shaping the global architecture agenda over the three-day event, including Ole Scheeren, Christina Seilern and Reinier de Graaf. The festival runs from 30 November to 2 December.
Büro Ole Scheeren has unveiled its design for a hotel resort in Cebu, one of the most popular destinations in the Philippines. Taking inspiration from the island’s natural landscape and traditional architecture, the project brings together lush greenery, pools and waterfalls within a volume wrapped in arches reminiscent of local structures. The design team describes the project as “a journey through the rainforest”, where architecture, interior design and landscape converge into a multi-sensory experience.
Shigeru Ban, Pritzker Prize-winner, and Ole Scheeren, RIBA silver medalist, were appointed for the Hangzhou Wangjiang New Town master plan. Creating new art and cultural destination in the historical city, the project in collaboration with New World Development and K11 Group seeks to build a landmark that meets the needs of the new generation.
Buro Ole Scheeren recently revealed their design for two new towers to be built between Davie and Robson Villages in Vancouver, Canada. Named “Barclay Village,” the project combines residential units (with 30 percent of the units reserved for social housing), a variety of public amenities, and green terraces. The design was inspired by the "texture and scale of the surrounding urban fabric and folds the typologies of the two historic villages."
In this photoset, British photographers Hufton + Crow turn their lens toward Büro Ole Scheeren’s ‘dissolving’ MahaNakhon tower in Bangkok. Now the tallest building in the Thai capital at 1030 feet (314 meters), the pixelated skyscraper opened last summer with a fantastical light show display.
The project began as a design by Ole Scheeren for local firm Pace Development, and was completed by his own firm following his departure from OMA in 2010. The architects describe the project:
The design of MahaNakhon dismantles the typical tower and podium typology, creating a skyscraper that melds with the city by gradually ‘dissolving’ as it flows downward to meet the ground. A series of cascading indoor/outdoor terraces at the base of the tower accommodates retail and entertainment facilities, evoking the shifting protrusions of a mountain landscape.
See the full gallery of photos, after the break.
A simultaneous celebration of their cultural iconicity and distillation from their various contexts, Beautified China is a photographic essay by Kris Provoost (one-half of the vlogging duo behind #donotsettle) that tracks the evolution of Chinese architectural landmarks over the course of the past 7 years. Beginning his investigation with the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Provoost considers a decade of architecture proposed for China by the profession’s biggest names, many of which have been built now with monumental reputations in rising cities.
“Most ‘starchitects’ had their chance to build, or to fulfill their wildest dreams,” explains Provoost. “Some of them became landmarks: CCTV headquarters by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren or the Bird’s Nest/National Stadium by Herzog and de Meuron for example. Others have turned a suburb into a new center, or have established a new city on its own.”
As long as there have been buildings mankind has sought to construct its way to the heavens. From stone pyramids to steel skyscrapers, successive generations of designers have devised ever more innovative ways to push the vertical boundaries of architecture. Whether stone or steel, however, each attempt to reach unprecedented heights has represented a vast undertaking in terms of both materials and labor – and the more complex the project, the greater the chance for things to go awry.
In this video from CNN Style Ole Scheeren, the former OMA partner and founder of Büro Ole Scheeren, discusses his MahaNakhon tower, a luxury mixed used skyscraper that has transformed the Bangkok skyline. MahaNakhon was recognized as the tallest building in Thailand by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) after its light show inauguration earlier this year.
STAGE, a protoype for a new chef-led fast food concept, has debuted last week at Design Miami. Designed by internationally renowned architect Ole Scheeren for New York-based gourmet market and food supplier Dean & DeLuca, STAGE highlights interactive preparation, presentation, and consumption of food as a dynamic cultural and social experience. The new service format will become part of Dean & DeLuca’s expansion throughout key north American cities in 2017.
The program for the 2016 edition of the World Architecture Festival (WAF) has been announced. Being held from November 16-18 at the Arena Berlin, Germany, the festival will feature 3 days and 4 nights of events including conferences, lectures and seminars, architect-led city tours and networking opportunities, as well as live critiques of the 411 projects shortlisted for the 2016 WAF Awards. An all-star list of speakers will include leading architectural figures such as Patrik Schumacher, Ole Scheeren and Peter Cook.
This theme of this year’s festival is “Housing For Everyone.” Inspired by a variety of influences, markedly the condition of displaced communities of political and disaster refugees, lectures will focus on “the growing understanding of how demographics and global urbanization are forcing change; and the imperatives to create shelter at one end of the spectrum, and sufficiency for occupation and investment at the other.”
The World Architecture Festival (WAF), the largest international gathering of architects, has announced its judges for 2016. The annual event, consisting of awards, a conference, and an exhibition, recognizes outstanding projects in a variety of categories, and is attended by over 2,000 visitors from 65 countries. This year's festival will be held from November 16-18, 2016 at Arena Berlin in Germany.
In his TED Talk filmed at TEDGlobal London in September 2015, Ole Scheeren eschews what he describes as the “detrimental straightjacket” of the modernist mantra “form follows function” in favor a phrase he attributes to Bernard Tschumi, “form follows fiction.” While Tschumi was referencing how cultural artifacts, such as literature, impact architecture, Scheeren reinterprets the phrase, imagining the stories of building users in order to inform the design process. Scheeren recounts, for example, how the daily activities of CCTV employees, the lifestyles of residents of a Singapore housing block, or the traditional tools of Thai fishermen have informed his various designs for OMA and Büro Ole Scheeren.
Of course, this “fiction” that Scheeren describes, these stories, are not really fictions at all, but the real experiences of the people who live or work in his buildings. In that sense, the fiction that drives his forms is really just another type of function, albeit a more human approach to function. Nevertheless, for Scheeren the stories of these designs goes beyond just the users, also encompassing the stories of the hundreds of people it takes to make such buildings a reality, and even how architecture can become a character in the narratives of our own lives.
Hong Kong- and Beijing-based Büro Ole Scheeren is expanding with the opening of two new offices in Berlin and Bangkok. As its founder, German architect Ole Scheeren says, the expansion will extend the practice's range of work with projects in Europe and North America. "Büro Ole Scheeren’s Berlin studio will act as a European base for work across the western hemisphere, while Büro Ole Scheeren in Bangkok, together with its subsidiary HLS, is charged with the further design development and construction supervision of the MahaNakhon tower, soon to be completed as Thailand’s tallest skyscraper," says the practice.
Participating in the What Can Design Do conference in Amsterdam, Ole Scheeren took time, along with several other creators, to discuss the impact of the working environment. Playfully dubbed, “Pod Sessions,” each talk takes place in De Vorm’s contemporary Pod chair, the PET plastic improving acoustics and signature Dutch felt providing comfort. In his Pod Session, Ole Scheeren, founder of Buro OS and lead designer on the CCTV Building in China, talks about the nature of a transitional workplace, the importance of collaboration, offices as a creative tool and the necessity of having a personal presence in a project. Having participated in projects across the world, Scheeren frequently moves to the site of his latest projects, as was the case with the CCTV Building.
